


a bunch of hocus pocus

by mingowow



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Magic, a cat named wonwoo, countryside mingyu tries to befriend a cat, hocus pocus au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mingowow/pseuds/mingowow
Summary: It’s lonely sometimes but Mingyu doesn’t really register it like that at his age. He just wishes he had someone (or something, like a cat) to explore with.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kim Mingyu
Comments: 13
Kudos: 122
Collections: Director's Cut Fest





	a bunch of hocus pocus

**Author's Note:**

> this is loosely inspired by the film hocus pocus, though mostly by the whole binx the cat storyline.
> 
> thanks to the mods of director's cut for hosting this fest!
> 
> i hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think~
> 
> unbeta'd, we die like men. any mistakes are my own, sorry!

When Mingyu is ten, his parents uproot the entire family and move them to the countryside.

It’s not too bad for a kid of his age. There’s more than enough room to run around and neighbors let him swipe strawberries from their greenhouses and play around with newly born baby calves. His mom lets him stay out until sundown and some ways down the road, he even finds a creak tucked away in a sparsely filled forest where he catches dragonflies and chases after frogs.

There aren’t a lot of kids around near his age and his sister is too young (and annoying) to keep up with all of his antics, so he spends a lot of time alone. It’s lonely sometimes but he doesn’t really register it like that at his age. He just wishes he had someone to explore with.

It’s finally his month-long summer vacation and while his parents had initially promised a trip to Busan, his grandmother ends up in the hospital and his mother is recruited into taking care of her.

His father isn’t very adept at taking care of things around the house since he’s away from home so much to begin with thanks to work, but Mingyu uses that to his advantage. They eat ramen for dinner two nights in a row and his dad lets him stay outside all day, no requirements to come home and read or practice piano for a few hours each day.

(“It’s probably your last free summer vacation after all, Mingyu. Enjoy it.”)

So Mingyu spends his days hunting for bugs and feeding long stalks of grass to nearby neighbors’ horses. One day, he finds a small cluster of trees, a baby forest he affectionately refers to it as, down the road from his house.

He climbs trees there every day and one afternoon, he rips the side of his shirt on a prickly branch. Mingyu doesn’t cuss but he thinks a bad word _very loudly_ in his head (he had heard his father say it once when their car got rear-ended by a taxi) because he knows he can’t hide this from his mother and she won’t be happy about it.

He twists his torso to look down at the damage and the wind causes the gash to flap against his skin. He can see streaks of dirt along his side and figures even if he’s gonna get a verbal lashing for tearing it, the least he can do is try to clean it (and himself) up.

There’s a stream just a few paces away and he whips the shirt off, getting his arm stuck for a moment in the process. The water is very shallow but it’s enough for him to soak the thing. He finds a large, smooth rock along the water’s edge and rubs the fabric on, trying to emulate how he’s seen his mother and grandmother hand wash things. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it right but every few swipes, he checks the dirt smudges and sees them fading. It fills him with a giddy feeling, like his mother would be proud of him. Of course, minus the whole destroying his shirt scenario.

Once the thing looks clean enough to him (though now not only is it ripped but it’s also soaked and crumpled), he hangs it on a low branch nearby before he begins to wash off himself.

He’s not bleeding but he can see (and feel) the long scratch just along his waist. It doesn’t hurt much but the cool water feels nice. It feels so refreshing that it takes him a long moment to realize he’s not alone.

He doesn’t hear or see anything, but he gets this gradual sinking feeling as if someone is watching him. He’s felt it before, when his mother stood silently in the doorway of his room as he shoveled contraband jelly candies into his mouth.

When Mingyu looks up, part of him expects to see her standing there, hand on her hip and an unamused “you’re-in-for-it-now” expression etched on her face. But instead, he’s met with two unfamiliar golden eyes.

Two golden eyes that belong to a cat.

The feline is sitting on the other side of the flowing water, watching him unblinkingly. It would be perhaps a bit scary if Mingyu wasn’t obsessed with anything and everything related to creatures. He all but squeals at the sight of it.

“Oh hello!” he calls out, quickly reaching out a wet hand towards it.

The all-black animal lets out a soft shriek as water droplets fly towards it, very clearly scaring the thing and causing it to bolt off towards a cluster of trees.

“Wait, come back!” Mingyu cries, lunging towards it and falling onto his knees, right into the water.

Of course, the cat doesn’t listen or comply with his request. And now his shorts are soaked too, muddy creek water sopped into the hem.

He checks his watch (a birthday present from his grandfather last year) and sighs. There definitely is not enough time to dry these too before his mom comes home from the hospital.

**\---**

Mingyu doesn’t get grounded (or screamed at too much; his mom directs that towards his father for not keeping a closer eye on him). But he is forced to follow a daily routine that consists of studying English textbooks, doing an overflowing heap of chores around the house, and playing with his sister for an hour after breakfast.

But once all that is finished, he’s free to run off on his own.

Every day, he always visits the creek first thing in hopes of spotting the cat. When he comes up empty-handed, he swings back there just before sunset, when he’s gotta head back home. But for almost a week, there’s nothing to see. No cat.

The next week, Mingyu has what seems like a stroke of absolute genius. When his dad is out back washing down the car, he swipes a can of tuna from the kitchen and slips it into his front pocket. It’s a bit uncomfortable to run with it there and it pops out a few times during his sprint to the little stream, but he’s too excited to stroll there this morning. Because he has an _amazing_ plan that he knows will draw the cat to him.

Peeling back the lid and being careful of the sharp edges (like his mother reminded him so many times before), he leaves the can on the ground, a few paces from the trickling water. He stands around awkwardly for a few minutes before realizing maybe it’ll take some time for the cat to smell it and find its way to the food source.

He knows cats _love_ fish, it comes only second to mice, so this has to work, he tells himself.

Mingyu goes about his day climbing trees and catching butterflies in his cupped hands, never straying too far from the spot so he doesn’t miss the cat’s appearance. It’s maybe the length of two episodes of Digimon before he sees something out of the corner of his eye.

It blends in fairly well with the dark muddy ground and brown twigs scattered about, but it’s not the most stealth creature he’s ever seen. It walks in a way that seems very un-feline, almost as if it had just been woken from sleep and was stumbling out of bed. It’s almost lazy, a bit careless.

Mingyu is sitting in the crux of a sturdy oak tree and he doesn’t dare move, he doesn’t want to scare off the animal again like last time. So he stays quietly crouched, holding his breath with exaggerated puffed cheeks as the cat approaches his bait.

It’s quite the strange sight, one he hadn’t been expecting. Ideally, the cat would have accepted his olive branch and happily hopped into his lap upon finishing off the tuna fish, allowing it to be showered in his pets and scratches. In a more perhaps realistic world, the cat would tolerate his hovering and cooing without dashing off like before, simply because there was some food to keep it around.

But neither of those happens. Mingyu doesn’t even get a second to admire its shiny coat or pretty eyes before it sniffs the can of tuna and then with a hiss, swats at it and sends it flying, chunks of white fish flung into the stream.

“Hey!” Mingyu yells out, a sudden wave of annoyance sweeping over him.

The cat looks up at him and the sound that comes out of it then is… very weird.

It’s not a purr or a meow or even another _hiss_. It’s nothing he’s ever heard come out of a cat or any animal before. But it is something Mingyu has heard before; in fact, it’s similar to a sound he knows he himself has made before, when his mother nags him about playing with his sister or his teacher asks him to stop talking so much during class.

It’s a long, heavy sigh: a sigh laced with annoyance.

“Did you just _sigh_?” he asks the cat (rhetorically, of course.)

The fur on the animal seems to prickle at his question, which is weird to him too, and it quickly turns to scamper away, getting lost in the patch of trees again.

When Mingyu goes to bed that night, he lays awake for a long time wondering what kind of cat doesn’t like fish, of all things? And since when can cats make sounds that are so humanlike?

The next day, after helping dry dishes and handing tools to his dad as he fixes something wrong with the lawnmower, Mingyu takes his backpack and fills it with whatever food he can grab before his dad notices him stocking up. The cat has to like something he’s got with him.

He breaks off a chunk of choco pie before shoveling the rest into his mouth, dumps out a leftover container holding a few pieces of fried chicken, peels open a bottle of banana milk, and makes a little nest of perilla leaves he hopes his mom won’t notice is missing.

It’s a definite random buffet of food but having such a wide range of snacks, Mingyu is convinced he’ll be able to win over the very peculiar cat.

He doesn’t want to scare off the thing again but he’s too eager, too impatient to attempt hiding or crouching far away. So he sits down near the spread, close enough to be in petting distance should the cat allow him to scratch its ears.

Mingyu’s lucky because he doesn’t have to wait long to spot a streak of black darting around in the trees.

It takes a lot of self-control, but he manages to stay quiet, only fidgeting to swat away some mosquitos that keep buzzing around his nose.

And it works! It actually works! The cat, although hesitant, seems to regard Mingyu with its unblinking golden eyes before slowly coming up to the food. Mingyu’s fingers twitch where they are resting on his knee but he resists the urge to reach out with grabby hands.

The cat sniffs down the line and without hesitation, when it comes to the choco pie last, gobbles up the already melting chocolate in one large bite. And once it’s finished chomping down, it sticks its nose into the yellow bottle of banana milk and tries to lap it out.

“Wait, here,” Mingyu tells it, the cat looking up at him at his words. He takes the lid from the chicken container and flips it over before pouring some of the milk into it, using it as a shallow dish.

The cat makes a quiet sound that Mingyu can’t decipher (though he really hopes it was a cute little meow) before it dives in and goes to town on the sweet drink.

With his chin in his palm, Mingyu watches fondly, letting out a soft _coo_ when the animal comes up for a breath and he spots the adorable milk mustache it has, droplets clinging to the black fur around its mouth.

With a new wave of confidence, Mingyu moves up to his feet, squatting over the feline, hand hovering above its back, eager to run his fingers through the shiny fur.

“You’re so cute,” he sighs, allowing his fingers to brush along the back of the animal’s neck.

The cat jerks up and hisses at him at that, surprising Mingyu so much that he loses his balance and falls backward, down the small slope of the creek bank. His head whips back right onto a large rock and there’s a sudden rush of pain that radiates through his skull.

“ _Crap, are you alright?_ ”

Mingyu doesn’t know where the voice comes from, he just blinks his eyes a bunch of times because his vision is so blurry and fuzzy and _ow_ , his head really hurts.

He allows himself to lay still for a moment before forcing himself to sit up, the rushing water from the stream too cold on his exposed neck.

Thankfully there’s no blood on his fingers when he feels around his scalp but the relief is short-lived when he notices the cat is long gone, along with some of the chicken and a perilla leaf or two.

**\---**

Mingyu lies and tells his mom he slipped out of a tree and hit his head. She scolds him for being too careless and his dad reminds him that he really needs to take care of himself better because he’s too much of a klutz. His mom drives him to the nearest clinic and he’s given the okay, just “keep an eye on him” which Mingyu doesn’t plan on letting mean he can’t leave the house the next day. Beyond that, nobody really questions him or his accident, thankfully.

The only questioning being done is by Mingyu himself and it’s about who the heck he heard talking to him when fell and smacked his head.

After he had gotten up, he had looked all around the creek and wooded area and there wasn’t a soul in sight. The closest person he saw was someone in a car driving down the road, a good thirty-second sprint away from where he was.

He wonders if perhaps it was a figment of his imagination; he had hit his head after all. But it seemed so real, he just couldn’t shake it. It had sounded like a boy, a kid around his age maybe. Was someone watching him? Stalking him? Did the cat have an owner who was using their pet to taunt and tease him? Was there another kid around here that he could befriend? Mingyu needed to know.

His mom tells him to stay home the next day but the moment she’s gone off to the hospital and his dad falls asleep in front of the TV mid-morning, he sneaks out and heads straight for the stream.

When he arrives, he’s surprised to see the cat already there, sitting near the water’s edge, its tail slowly flicking back and forth.

With experience under his belt now, Mingyu approaches the animal cautiously, his feet slow and his movements as gentle as he can manage to make them. He crouches down near the feline, giving it some space in case he accidentally scared it off again.

“Hello,” he greets, getting a side-eyed look in return. “Where’s your owner? Do you belong to a kid like me?”

The cat doesn’t reply obviously but it does something Mingyu isn’t expecting: it steps closer to him. It circles around him at first and then all of a sudden, it’s rubbing its head against his bare shin.

Which of course tickles him and has him tipping back onto his butt with a small ‘ _oof_ ’.

The cat blinks at him and then meows, nudging his knee and trotting a few steps away. It looks back at him and meows again, leaving Mingyu to tilt his head in confusion.

“Do you want me to follow you?” he asks, popping back up to his feet.

He receives another meow and Mingyu wonders if perhaps he’s had it wrong all along: he always assumed dogs were the smarter, superior pet but perhaps cats were fairly intelligent too.

The cat takes off again in a light scamper and Mingyu follows behind it dutifully. It stops and glances back at him every so often, leading him out of the wooded area, down the main road of the town, and across a few fields. It’s a long trek, far enough that Mingyu feels a little bit lost and it makes him nervous. He’s never been this far out by himself.

He’s not supposed to be out at all, let alone so far away from home. And his excuse for doing so is blindly following some cat that clearly doesn’t understand him anyway.

Eventually, they pass through another sparsely forested patch of land and just on the other edge of the trees, Mingyu spies a small house. It’s more a shack, really.

It’s worn and dirtied, with overgrown brush and grass as if it hasn’t been touched in years. The glass of the windows is so dusty and smudged, he can’t see in. There are shingles missing from the roof and one of the three wooden steps up to the door is completely rotted through.

“What the heck is this?” he asks, partially to the cat and partially to nobody in particular.

The animal meows on cue though and it’s all too weird, it’s too creepy. Mingyu can’t handle scary, he can’t deal with horror movies or haunted houses and he definitely can’t deal with this spooky abandoned house in the middle of nowhere.

As if sensing his hesitation, the cat is suddenly circling around his legs, rubbing against him and _purring_. He got it to purr! That means it’s happy, right? The cat is glad he’s here?

“Is this where you’re living?”

Another meow. Mingyu watches as it takes off and bounces up the steps, expertly avoiding the broken one before sitting on the porch, facing him. It meows again.

“Listen, you couldn’t pay me to go in there.” He shudders at just the thought.

The thing keeps meowing at him and he swears its eyes well up with tears or expand to twice their normal size because its the saddest look he’s ever received and it’s from a bizarre cat. It eats away at something inside of him.

“You really want me to go in, huh?” Damn his love for animals.

Mingyu lets out a shaky breath before taking a few steps closer to the house, which seems to perk the cat up instantly. Its tail flicks around and it moves to stand up, waiting for him to carefully (and shakily) climb over the broken step.

The front door is slightly ajar and the cat nudges it with the top of its head, pushing it in and padding inside. Mingyu thinks he’s about to pass out but before he gets too light-headed, he follows the cat into the dark house.

It’s definitely been mostly untouched for years, the layers of dust covering the floor and every surface he can see are quite clear indicators of that.

But where Mingyu expects to see an empty room or perhaps some left behind furniture, like a couch or a table, he is unfortunately surprised.

There are bookshelves, which seems commonplace enough, but when he steps closer to them, he finds thick, hardcover books that look antique, nearly ancient even. Some of the titles along the spines he can’t even read because they are in some language that looks like scribbles to him. There are some other shelves covered with various glass bottles and jars, some empty and others filled with dark, gloopy substances that are unsettling to even look at.

And in the middle of the room is a large pot. No, not a pot. A freaking _cauldrom_. The type he’s seen in Halloween store displays except this one is definitely not plastic. It’s iron and huge, big enough for him to sit in.

Mingyu wants to run. He needs to get out of here because _what on Earth_ is this place? But just as he turns back to the door, it slams shut and Mingyu sees the cat at the base of it, blocking his path.

“You can’t leave yet,” the cat tells him.

Mingyu is about to argue back when… when he realizes it was the cat. The cat is talking. To him. _The cat is speaking to him_.

Mingyu takes many steps back, fast, until something hits his back and he looks behind him and it’s the cauldron. He nearly falls into the freaking human-stew-sized cauldron.

“Don’t freak out, just hear me out, please,” the cat says with a sigh. The same kind of sigh Mingyu had heard at the creek before.

“Oh my god, I really must have a concussion,” Mingyu says to himself, feeling at the back of his head out of instinct.

“You aren’t imagining this, you aren’t crazy. But calm down and just listen to me, please? I need your help.”

It takes him a moment but Mingyu manages to look down at the cat, the _talking_ cat, more closely and he notices its expression. Its brow (do cats have brows?) is pinched as if it’s serious or concerned or concentrating on something.

“I shouldn’t be able to listen to you at all, you’re a cat,” Mingyu replies, words spewing out of him without much thought.

He reaches behind himself and grips the edge of the cauldron to steady his swaying body. It’s cold and hard and prickles at his skin uncomfortably, which is creepy enough without everything else going on. But there are bigger, creepier matters at hand.

“I’m not really a cat. I mean, I’m trapped in a cat’s body, yes... but I’m human, just like you. And I need you to help me turn back.”

The cat (the supposed human in a cat’s body) pads across the room and jumps up onto a low shelf, climbing with particular feline dexterity.

“My help? Why me? Oh god, why did you pick me? This is so awful, I’m the worst person to deal with weird stuff. Is it because I haven’t been listening to my parents? Is this punishment?” Mingyu babbles, really suddenly too hot. He normally handles the summer heat well but now he’s boiling.

There’s another sigh from the cat and it looks over at him with eyes that read unamused.

“This isn’t about _you_. It’s about me. I was cursed and only a virgin can break the curse.”

Mingyu’s mind seems to go blank. “A virgin?”

“Yeah. And there seems to be a lack of obvious virgins in this town with it being all elderly couples and such. So when I came upon you, I knew you were my chance.”

“You knew I was a virgin?” Mingyu’s voice all but squeaks.

“You’re a _kid_. You better be one.”

Mingyu doesn’t argue back. Arguing with a cat about a very obvious fact doesn’t seem like a high priority right now. Running out the door seems like the most important thing but something keeps his feet glued to the floor.

“I need you to light this,” the cat tells him, nudging a tall, cylindrical candle with its nose. Mingyu sees swirls and characters etched into the wax but he doesn’t recognize the language at all.

When Mingyu doesn’t reply or move, the cat huffs and jumps back to the floor, pulling something out from under one of the bookshelves. It (he?) picks it up with his mouth and drops it at Mingyu’s feet. It’s a plastic lighter.

“Please. Help me.”

“How… did you get turned into a cat?”

“That book over there, on the podium. There’s a curse in it that turned me like this. I’ve been trapped like this for _years_.”

“Years? And you’ve never found someone else to help you?” Mingyu asks, his voice soft. He feels a twinge of pity inside his chest.

“There was another boy in town a few years back. But when I finally approached him, he tried to strap some firecrackers to me, so…”

The cat paws at its head, as if it’s rubbing its forehead in distress. Mingyu wants to scratch its ear in comfort but he reminds himself: this is evidently a human. A boy, if he had to guess by voice alone.

“What’s your name?” he asks the cat.

“I’m Wonwoo.”

“How old are you?”

“Are you gonna interrogate me before you do as I asked?”

Mingyu is taken aback by the bluntness, his fingers squeezing the cauldron before he lets go to bend down and shakily pick up the lighter.

“If you want me to help you, shouldn’t you be a little bit nicer?”

Wonwoo the cat sighs again, his head turning away. “I’m sorry. It’s just… I was thirteen when this happened to me and it’s been a long time since then. I’ve been waiting for so long.”

“How many years?”

“Just... a long time.”

Mingyu chews on his bottom lip in thought, glancing between the candle and the open book on the nearby podium. He steps over to curiously (in a near horrified manner) glances over the pages and sees it’s written in Korean.

“So… I just light the candle?”

“Yes, that’s all you have to do.”

“And you’ll turn back into a human?”

“Supposedly.”

“Who did this to you? Why did they do it?”

The sound Wonwoo makes is definitely more cat-like than human, a mix between a hiss and a strangled cry. Mingyu spots his tiny yet sharp fangs and all but jumps out of his skin in fear. Cats truly are scary, he decides.

“Okay, okay! Fine!”

Mingyu fumbles with the lighter, hurrying over to the candle and trying to light it.

“Quickly!” Wonwoo calls out to him. Mingyu can feel his ankles being nudged repeatedly.

It takes him a few tries, his finger slipping and nerves so highly strung that he can’t keep his hand steady. He manages to light it finally and his stomach twists as he watches the orange flame flicker to a dark color, almost black.

“Good!” Wonwoo calls out to him, pacing around the floor in a way that Mingyu can only label as nervous.

What does he have to be nervous about though? He’s had years evidently to get used to this craziness. He’s had time to adjust to being a cat whereas Mingyu is just learning about all this. This is brand new _crazy_ information!

Mingyu steps back as the flame begins to heavily smoke, stumbling over the uneven floorboards and nearly wiping out in his hurry. He clutches onto the podium for support and swallows the lump in his throat as his eyes flicker to the book and scan over the words. The pages are discolored, dark yellow almost, and he swipes his fingers across the paper to remove a thick layer of dust.

He reads over the words in his head, morbid curiosity winning out over his fear. _Twist the bones and bend the back. Itchita…? Kupita…_

Mingyu does his best to blend together the foreign words and after a moment, his mind seems to start spinning. His vision becomes cloudy and his head feels heavy, like it’s about to pull him down to the ground.

Then everything goes black.

**\---**

There’s a faint sound of water running, bubbling over stones and trickling down, a sound that Mingyu knows well. A sound he loves very much.

He senses it then, the grass beneath his hands and head, the way it tickles his ears and itches his bare legs.

When Mingyu’s eyes flutter open, he has to squint against the brightness of the sun.

It’s still daytime, or perhaps just daytime in general, he’s a bit confused. And when he raises his head ever so slightly to look around, he’s greeted with the familiar image of the creek he has spent so much of his free summer vacation time at.

Of course, it must have all been a dream. He hit his head the other day and now from all his running about and sneaking around, he passed out in the summer heat and was having those fever dreams his grandmother had told him about before. There was no real talking cat, no dilapidated spooky house, no witch’s cauldron or magical candles or spells...

“Are you feeling alright?”

Mingyu’s whole body jerks in surprise, his head craning to the side to identify the voice.

A few paces away, there’s a boy, not much older than himself. His limbs are long and a bit gangly. He’s got round glasses perched on his nose and his hair is a mess, like it’s been ruffled aggressively by a distant relative at a family gathering (Mingyu knows the situation very well himself).

His clothes appear a bit odd too: well-worn and dirty, definitely outdated, like something Mingyu would see on a TV show and not on a kid around here.

Slowly, Mingyu sits his torso up. His head aches terribly, to the point where he almost feels nauseous. But something strikes him then that distracts him from the sensation.

“...Wonwoo?” he asks, voice unsure.

The four-eyed boy smiles at him, nose scrunching.

“Thanks for lighting the candle, virgin.”

Mingyu’s head is still awfully fuzzy but he feels himself smile. Wonwoo shifts and opens his mouth, seeming to hesitate.

“Say… you wouldn’t happen to have any more of those chocolate pie things on you, would you?”

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are greatly appreciated!! ^^


End file.
